


Never wanted

by Leonidas (Ice_Cat)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Angst, Author regrets nothing, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, No Comfort Only Hurt, One-Sided Love, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Shipping on a Ship, Unrequited Love, and cold, canon character death, emotional jack sparrow, hector barbossa being oblivious, no beta we die like men, sailor accent goes out the window
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:14:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28595307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ice_Cat/pseuds/Leonidas
Summary: A story of a certain mutiny, unrequited love and a compass that doesn't point north.
Relationships: Hector Barbossa/Jack Sparrow
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the author has two personal opinions that he feels inclined to share with the readers as a fair warning as to what he considers canon, as this story is technically a canon-compliant one: to hell with the books and POTC is a trilogy

It was a quiet night – for Tortuga, that is, as there were never any genuinely quiet nights on the island. The laughter and singing died down a little as the moon rose higher in the sky, and Jack Sparrow made his way to the beach with his first mate, rum in hand and a new story on his lips as they sat down on the sand. Well, to be completely fair, it was not a _new_ story, just an old one that he looked into and found it to be more than just a legend. Interesting nonetheless.

“Isla de Muerta,” Hector said in a mesmerized tone, drinking the rum he brought with him. He didn't really like it – he preferred wine, blood-red and rich in taste. But it was hard to get good liquor around here, and even the rum usually tasted better than the watered-down abomination the local vendors dared to call “wine”.

“The real deal.” Jack smiled, pulling out the cork from his bottle with his teeth and spitting it into the air, not paying much attention to where it landed – it's not like he's going to have to cork it back up.

“You know where it is?” The older man asked, brushing curly hair out of his face. It used to be much darker, Sparrow noticed, but the sun on the open seas made the color fade into a lighter one, closer to a dirty blond. There were also strands of grey now, which very much amused the young captain.

“I know how to find it,” he replied truthfully. He did not, in fact, know where the island was exactly. The precise location of it wasn't really described too well by the one he got the information from. It was rather vague, actually, and still left much room for speculation, but Jack believed the treasure to be his greatest desire – and therefore that the compass would lead him right to it. 

Hector laughed. Bit by bit, their bottles emptied almost completely, until their minds became almost too fuzzy with alcohol and the sand started to feel funny under their fingers.

“The possibility of having a treasure this big, Jack,” Barbossa sighed, voice hoarse and tired, staring dreamily into the far horizon, where the night sky rich with stars met its own reflection in the water. “It feels quite unreal.”

Jack turned to him.

“When you see all that gold, mate, when you touch the treasure with your own hands, it will not seem so unreal anymore,” he said with a toothy grin. “Before you will be the very means to getting whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, and now _that_ will seem unreal, not the gold itself.”

Hector's smile flashed in the moonlight as he turned to look at Jack, but his eyes never met those wild, dark ones, as the other man had already looked away.

“Although, I must say, the word of the curse that comes with the gold worries me a lot,” the young one continued with a concerned frown.

“Do not bother that pretty head of yours with fairy tales, captain,” Barbossa said, taking another sip from the bottle. “They are but children's stories.”

Jack clicked his tongue.

“Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're not. I, for one, would rather not have a curse brought down upon me. I enjoy life as it is, you know, without the otherworldly menacing threats to my soul meddling in it.”

Barbossa laughed again, finishing what was left of his share of rum in one solid chug. Jack couldn't stop smiling while downing his own to the last drop as well. He felt a strong arm around his shoulder and a chill ran down his spine. The bottles were dropped onto the cold sand.

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” he heard right next to his ear and shivered. “You truly are unpredictable.”

Sparrow had no idea what it meant. He turned to his first mate. Their noses were almost touching. Hector's hair fell into his face, a smile on his lips. Jack felt dizzy. He wouldn't dare move.

Their eyes locked. Jack said nothing. Hector said nothing. There was just silence. Then the older grinned and turned away. He patted the captain on his back and got up on his feet, swaying a bit.

“Go to sleep, Jack. We sail tomorrow.”

And then he was gone, just like that, lost in the light and sound of the lively streets behind Sparrow's back.

Later that night, Jack brushed his fingers on the smooth edges of his compass as he watched the arrow slowly move around. It kept pointing at the space in front of him, sometimes a bit to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes simply straight ahead. His brow furrowed. He was not on the move, and he was on solid ground, not on the sea. The island they were about to sail for in the morning couldn't possibly be moving around.

Something was off.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack spent the night tossing and turning. The way his compass suddenly started to behave made him too nervous to even consider getting some rest – and so when the sun was just mere hours from showing up on the horizon, and he couldn't stand being alone with his thoughts anymore, he put his boots on, grabbed the compass and exited the inn in complete silence that, somehow, had a very annoyed feel to it.

The morning breeze felt cold and fresh on his face. There was no one in sight, except for maybe a few drunks laying in the dirt, among all the rocks, piss and shattered glass, but none of them awake. He opened the compass. This time, it was steadily pointing in one specific direction. Jack frowned at the sight, but still decided to follow it.

As he walked through the empty streets of Tortuga, listening to the mewing of the seagulls and breathing in the salty wind, his thoughts, unprompted, drifted back to last night. Hector's eyes, a piercing grayish blue, the color itself cold yet the look warm and friendly, with a gleam of madness hiding somewhere in the iris. The scar on his face, rough and sharp, and yet blending well with the weather-beaten skin. The way his curly hair looked in the moonlight, both darker and lighter than it would ever be in the light of day. The lean and strong arms of a seasoned, hard-working sailor and fighter that could probably crush a man with little effort.

Eventually Jack realized he felt… off. Different than usual, of course – there was a big day ahead of him, but the feeling was not stress, nor excitement. It was something warm pooling inside his chest; eating through him like lava, except much, much quicker, spreading like fire let loose on carelessly spilled oil. He couldn't place a finger on it. He wasn't even sure it was something that he has ever felt before.

The compass' arrow twitched. Jack frowned, looking up. Ahead of him was the Pearl, his beloved ship – torn black sails and dark wood, still splintered by cannonballs here and there, a constant reminder of her recent battles that, Jack believed, was to be fixed soon after the treasure was in their hands.

He thought about said treasure as he made his way towards the ship. The legendary piles of gold that no one has found so far, rumored to be cursed by the Aztecs. It still worried him, that curse, despite what his first mate said. After all, every tale – be it a myth, a fairy tale or a children's bedtime story – was built on something else, and so in every tale there was always some truth hidden underneath.

Then again, maybe Barbossa was right. Maybe it was nothing to think about; only an old legend of a treasure that was so tempting that at some point someone had to add the curse into the mix to scare off possible pursuers.

As Jack boarded the Pearl, swaggering like he was the one true king and master of it, which, of course, he was, he noticed the compass' pointer turn again. Curious as he was, he looked up instantly, the trinkets in his hair ringing quietly because of the sharp movement of his head.

And there he was. Sitting on the rail of the quarterdeck, shoulder-length hair tied back with a gray bandana, a sword already at his belt, white shirt halfway open and a dark blue coat carelessly thrown over his back.

Hector Barbossa, seemingly enjoying the cold morning breeze while lazily putting on his boots.

Jack was pretty sure his heart skipped a beat, though for what reasons exactly, at that moment he couldn't say.

Half-panicked already, he looked at the compass again. The arrow was, unmistakably, pointing at his first mate. He lightly shook the little box, but the pointer remained where it was. A swarm of questions clouded Jack's mind for a second, before he decided that he had more important things to do, now that he is on the ship, rather than worrying about the person his one-of-a-kind compass declared as his biggest desire, and brushed them off.

“Hector!” He called out happily, approaching the blond with just a little more caution than usual. “Beautiful morning, isn't it?” 

Barbossa looked up, following the dark-haired with his sharp eyes as he headed towards the stairs to the quarterdeck. If he noticed anything different in the way Jack acted, which he probably did, he didn't let it show.

“The sun is not even up yet. I would hardly call it a morning,” he replied, voice even more gravelly than usual as these were the first words he said since he woke. He had a habit of getting up earlier than the rest of the crew, and it was well-known on board the Pearl that if you came across Hector Barbossa before the day on the ship actually started, you did not interact.

Jack, obviously, has never had any regard for rules.

“Call it what you want, the hour is early and there is already sun in the air,” the young captain grinned, doing a little bowing gesture as he passed the stairs and disappeared in the entrance to the captain's cabin. He could swear he heard Hector chuckle before the door fully closed behind him.

And suddenly there it was again, the burning feeling inside his chest, as if dripping down towards his stomach, once more leaving him confused beyond reason.

Before he knew it, he was sinking down to the floor, lost in his thoughts. There was a problem. A _big_ one. In fact, _more_ than one. His compass, the one thing that was originally meant to serve as a way to navigate to Isla de Muerta, was not pointing at the bloody island. What it did point to, was Hector Barbossa. Which either meant that it was broken, or that Jack's deepest desire was, in fact, not the treasure, but his first mate.

He didn't like that thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya'll, “there was no one in sight, except for maybe a few drunks laying in the dirt, among all the rocks, piss and shattered glass, but none of them awake” is officially literally the most majestic line i have ever written in my entire life. i just wanted to point this out because i am very proud of it.


	3. Chapter 3

What did one use if they did not possess the knowledge of whereabouts of a specific place they needed to find?

Maps.

Large and small, old and new, used and untouched, sometimes updated as the owner discovered new places on their way. Pieces of paper that tended to be much more valuable than any treasure of silver and gold, simply because they could lead to many places where other valuables could be found.

Jack didn't have those. But Hector did. And they were all over the room, resting safely in places where the captain couldn't accidentally spill anything on them, but still in plain sight, right there within his reach.

So he reached for them. He gathered every single scroll he could and put up an enormous stack on the table before sitting down and looking over them, unsure of how to proceed.

Truth be told, he wasn't even remotely familiar with any of them, because he never needed to use them. They were Hector's domain, and his property as well. Jack always set the destination, but it was his first mate who served as the ship's navigator. The captain wasn't quite sure if he was even allowed to touch those maps, but uncertainty has never stopped him from anything before, and it wasn't going to stop him now.

As far as common knowledge went, there wasn't a single map in the whole world that marked the location of Isla de Muerta. Jack was painfully aware of that. But hoping has never doomed a man.

What has, on the other hand, probably doomed a man before, was having no idea how to read charts and picking one to focus on at random.

Which was exactly what he did. 

The feel of the grainy old paper under his fingers, stained in some places, with torn edges and missing corners, was definitely a strange one. Maybe because he wasn't used to it, or maybe because they were Hector's possessions; something clearly personal, as there were little notes on them that even Jack recognized as the blond's handwriting, while not really having ever seen much of it except for his signatures on documents. 

Time can certainly be a very peculiar thing, and with his nose buried in the papers, looking at all the lines and shapes, trying to find something even though he didn't even know what he was looking for, Jack quickly lost track of it. A knock on his door has never sounded more foreign than it did just now, making him raise his head sharply. He immediately noticed that although the sun still wasn't up, the world got significantly brighter.

“What?” He asked, voice raised just enough to be heard through the entrance.

Instead of an answer, the door opened just enough for a man to slip into the room. It was Hector. Jack's chest briefly burned again, as if he just downed a whole bottle of rum in one go. He resisted the urge to clutch at it. The feeling made him uncomfortable to say the least.

At first, Barbossa looked like he walked into the captain's cabin with some purpose, maybe something to say, maybe something to do, but as soon as his eyes fell upon Jack, he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the room.

“You're studying my charts,” he exclaimed, quite stunned if Jack was to judge. He blinked, frowning, but still unmoving.

“Clever observation, my friend,” Jack replied sarcastically, the hand that he rested his head on up until now falling on the table with a thud. “How can I help you, now that you have so rudely barged into my cabin?”

Hector shook his head, as if going out of a trance, and then snickered. 

“ _ Apologies _ , my captain,” he said, changing his footing and spreading his arms widely to lean forward in a small bow.

Jack has never in his life seen a man who could bow as sarcastically as his first mate just did.

“Apology accepted,” he muttered quickly, eyes back on the charts spread on the table. “Now, business, if you please, I am trying to do something here.”

Barbossa chuckled.

“You don't know a single thing about charts, Jack.”

The dark-haired froze.

“I  _ do _ .”

“No, you don't. You always rely on that trinket of yours,” the first mate pointed in the general direction of Jack's waist, where his compass was usually attached to the belt, “but you can't do anything with the charts. That's why we have  _ me _ .”

“Well, maybe I want to  _ learn _ chart things, and that's why I am sitting here,  _ trying _ to do chart things!” He snapped, the annoyance in his voice obvious enough for anyone to catch on.

Hector grinned. Jack's throat felt tight.

“Well, if that's the case,” he changed his approach, walking up to the table and pulling out a chair across from the captain, “care for some company?” 

Jack clenched his jaw. He didn't want to occupy his mind with Hector right now, and he certainly didn't want to sit so near him, but he also didn't want to raise even further suspicion by sending him away, so instead he just shrugged, looking up at him with that famous charming smile.

“Stay, if you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want to thank everyone who reads this fic as i update it, and also those eight people in particular who left kudos. you know who you are, i have no idea, and this is a shoutout to you for making my week better.


	4. Chapter 4

Barbossa stayed. Partially because Jack was acting quite strange, even for Jack, and partially because he simply wanted to. He enjoyed the young man's company way more than he'd like to admit.

He stretched out his legs under the table and watched with indescribable amusement as Jack stared blankly at the papers laid out before him. It was obvious that he didn't even know where to start, but the way his brow was furrowed, in an expression somewhere between annoyance, helplessness and deep focus, was too funny to him to do anything about the situation.

Eventually, Sparrow groaned, hiding his face in his hands.

“If you aren't here to help then why the hell did you stay?” he asked, voice muffled a little.

Hector smiled wickedly.

“Because you're quite amusing when you're clueless, Jack, and I wanted to have an amusing morning,” he said. It wasn't entirely true. In fact, he stayed to help. But he wasn't going to offer it; he had too much pride. He wanted the captain to ask for his help specifically.

And Jack, being Jack, saw right through his words.

“Come on, Hector. Please? A little guidance? I don't even know where to start! At this point your staring at me is just cruel,” he said, looking up at the first mate.

Barbossa sighed. His hands made quick work of finding the right scrolls of paper in the mess that Jack had made on the table as the dark-haired watched with a stunned expression. He was never really aware of just how confident and experienced his first mate was in his skill.

Time passed by, and Hector spent most of it simply talking to the young captain. Explaining the basics, markings, writings and many other things, showing him examples and guiding him through the charts, rough fingers tracing dark lines on the paper.

Rough fingers that occasionally brushed against Jack's hands as he curiously reached out to point out something on the maps, making him shiver a little.

At first, it was hard for him to focus. He kept thinking about the compass, the burn in his chest, the way Hector's soft words made him feel. But after a while, he started asking questions, talking, moving things around. He got comfortable enough to laugh when Barbossa slapped his hands away because he kept interrupting to point things out. But he also quickly realized that he was not going to find out anything about Isla de Muerta. Not today, and probably not ever. Maps were not the place to look.

Soon, the first rays of sunshine hit the dirty windows of the captain's cabin. Warm light poured into the room, illuminating all the dust suspended in the air, and drew both men's attention away from the table full of papers. A calm, peaceful feeling washed over them as their eyes turned towards the rising sun.

“The crew will be up and running any minute now,” Barbossa noticed, voice a little rougher than usual from all the talking. Neither of them remembered the last time he talked this much. Jack felt a light piercing pain in his heart at the thought.

“Someone will need to set the course,” Jack said without a second thought, catching himself only after the words left his mouth. He looked up at the first mate. Their eyes met. Hector's – confused. His own – with a barely visible glint of fear that the blond is going to pick up on what's happening.

“That someone should usually be the captain,” Hector pointed out with a grin. “Unless, the captain doesn't know where we're headed,” he added teasingly.

Jack suddenly got really uncomfortable. But Barbossa couldn't know. There weren't enough hints. Or was his map panic that obvious?

“Of course I know where we're going!” He protested. “Otherwise we wouldn't be going. Quite a pointless errand that would be, sailing to the island that can only be found by those who already know where it is without actually knowing where it is.”

Barbossa looked away.

“Hard to disagree.”

They sat in silence for a few more seconds before the older man got up and stretched. He looked at Jack, nodded with a brief smile, and exited the room in complete silence. Moments after, the captain heard his rough, seemingly angry yelling accompanied by the sound of the bell, and his hand clutched at the shirt covering his chest. With a sigh, he got up on his feet, put the maps away and followed in Hector's footsteps.

The wind was strong, cold and salty. Jack couldn't help but smile when it hit his face upon opening the door. He loved that feeling and he loved that smell.

The whole crew was already on deck. Sailors young and old, with various motives for sailing under the black flag. Jack took in anyone who was willing to follow him even when he made reckless choices with little chance of success. That sure contributed a lot to the reason his entire ship was full of misfits. But those misfits were exactly the people he felt he could put a little trust in. 

He stepped out of the door frame, boots steady on the slightly swaying floor as he made his way towards the quarterdeck with confidence he has not seen in himself for a longer while. 

It was time to get on the move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genuinely sorry for the two month wait for the next chapter only for it to be this short. Too much school work, too little free time. I'm still working on the continuation whenever I can tho, so rest assured that this fic will be finished even if it takes me months :)


End file.
